


Those Who Survived The Day

by MermaidSmiled



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, Battle of Britain, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Military, Minor Character Death, RAF - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7380703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSmiled/pseuds/MermaidSmiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sid's duty as leader is to run the squadron, through death and replacements and victories and losses. It's a position which requires an amount of distance that's fucking hard to keep. He has all of his guys to look out for, and he sees the losses of everyone in their faces. He has his rookie pilots to keep alive for more than a week in the hopes of them being able to actually make a difference this time instead of getting shot down a week later.</p><p>Flower has become an almost permanent fixture in Sid’s quarters in the last few weeks, good at instinctively judging when Sid needs quiet or someone to keep him occupied or just to not be alone, even if he doesn't know himself what he’s looking for. The sound of pages being turned as Flower reads some cheap pulp novel regularly is soothing, an odd, reliable kind of rhythm. It accompanies the clicks and dings of Sid’s typewriter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Survived The Day

**Author's Note:**

> There aren't any pairing tags on this because they're all viewed through an outside POV that doesn't necessarily notice them enough to use the tags, but I'm sure you'll be able to pick them out!
> 
> I didn't think that this warranted a major character death warning, but my definition of minor vs major character might differ, so I'll include a list of who dies during the fic in the endnotes to avoid spoilers but to give some warning for anyone who needs it!

**RAF Center Station, Biggin-Hill.** ****  
**Southeast England.** **  
** **13th August, 1940.**

Sid can’t find Joey.

He’s not in the barracks, not on watch, and definitely not near any of the planes. Sid had meant to take him aside once they'd landed and left the planes in the hands of maintenance and the mechanics, but Air Marshall Sullivan had been on his ass for the mission report from their engagement that morning, and his plane has taken heavy damage that he needed to seriously talk to Shea about whether they'd be able to fix it up on the base or have to send it to one of the civilian mechanics.

By the time he has a chance to look for Joey, he’s already gone. The Biggin-Hill base is a big place, but Sid has looked all over, even speaking to some of the other Wing Commanders.

Sid's duty as leader is to run the squadron, through death and replacements and victories and losses. It's a position which requires an amount of distance that's fucking hard to keep. He has all of his guys to look out for, and he sees the losses of everyone in their faces. He has his rookie pilots to keep alive for more than a week in the hopes of them being able to actually make a difference this time instead of getting shot down a week later. Sid has enough experience that something about Joey puts him on edge.

He doesn't have time to acknowledge it openly, but if Sid is honest with himself, he sees in Joey what he thinks would in all likelihood see on his own face were he to look in a mirror, were he not Wing Commander.

He decides to give Joey some time to cool off and heads back to his quarters to type up the reports for Sullivan, while Flower sits in the other chair in the little office.

Flower has become an almost permanent fixture in Sid’s quarters in the last few weeks, good at instinctively judging when Sid needs quiet or someone to keep him occupied or just to not be alone, even if he doesn't know himself what he’s looking for. The sound of pages being turned as Flower reads some cheap pulp novel regularly is soothing, an odd, reliable kind of rhythm. It accompanies the clicks and dings of Sid’s typewriter.

Sid takes his time writing his mission reports, but by the time they’re sitting neatly in a manila folder on Sullivan’s desk, Joey still hasn't made himself apparent. He hasn't exactly been the most social guy since his reassignment from France - his hotshot reputation had originally had Sid expecting him to spend his time holding court with the rookies, impressing and terrifying them with outlandish stories of his exploits, eating up their attention, but he seems to mostly keep to himself. On the off-chance, Sid still asks everyone he can pull aside in the mess hall at dinner if they've seen him. None of them have.

Jenner would have known exactly where Joey was, but well… that’s part of the problem, really.

Once he's exhausted his options in the mess hall he sits down at the officers table with Tanger and Kuni. He'll have to do another round of the station, he supposes.

Flower, ever at hand, sits down beside Sid and pulls his half-empty plate over to poach the leftovers. Sid doesn't bother trying to stop him the way he would have back in flight school, and that draws a defeated sigh from Flower. He knows that Flower worries about Sid shouldering the burden of command.

“He's behind Hangar B, apparently,” Flower sighs again, and gestures to the door, “go and get him.”

Sid claps a hand on Flower’s shoulder in thanks as he gets up and attempts to give him a reassuring smile, but from the responses it gets at the table he suspects it hasn’t come out quite as encouraging as he’d intended. It would have been false hope if it had.

Joey is behind Hangar B, just like Flower had promised. As he takes in the amount of ripped-off filters and remnants of cigarettes and Joey’s vacant stare into the distance, Sid realises he’d been so preoccupied trying to find Joey that now he’s here, he doesn't actually know what to say.

Sid recognises the emptiness in Joey’s eyes, the detachment he's been projecting since he got to Biggin-Hill. He knows exactly what Joey’s been thinking since they landed, intimately - the grief, the guilt, the nightmares - but he doesn't know what to _do_ about it.

Any platitude would feel hollow from even the most genuinely whole of people, but from Sid it would be downright hypocritical, and that's not something he wants to be. The facts, though, are far too jagged and harsh for hearing them to help Joey right now.

In the end, Sid says nothing. He slides down the wall next to Joey, leaving a comfortable buffer zone between them. Joey barely moves, except to take another drag of his cigarette, and they both stare out over the fields in silence.

Joey is dangerous. He's been cavalier about rules since he got here, even when Jenner, the last man from his previous squadron, had still been around. After yesterday’s mission, the only thing that had kept him in check is gone. Sid doesn’t know much of what happened to the two of them in France beyond seeing names in reports, but he does know that Joey and Jenner had been through the shit and then walked into even more of it, the only survivors of an entire unit. They’d stuck close together when they’d arrived at Biggin-Hill, hardly interacting with anyone apart from each other.

He doesn’t want to think about it; not thinking about it is the last thing stopping him from looking like Joey does now. Dealing with what happened to Duper has been hard for Sid, hasn't got any easier, and honestly, the only way Sid has found to get by is to bury his grief as deep as Duper is buried now, somewhere at the bottom of the fucking English Channel. But he doesn't have the freedom to lash out or to close himself off like Joey has - he still has the squadron to run, still has a battle to fight. And, as strong an influence as his sense of duty, he still has Flower to lean on.

Sid knows that it's not healthy to repress his grief. He's not stupid. But he has to make Joey see that being reckless and getting himself killed isn't an option here, because they need him. He just doesn't know how to get that through to him.

“Bury it.” He says, finally. His voice scratches in his throat and he coughs, though he knows it's not his throat that's the problem. “Anything you don't need to get through the day, you bury. Later, you deal with it, but not now.”

Joey lets out a steady stream of smoke. He laughs, cold and humourless.

“Who says there's a later?” It's not really a question. Sid drops his eyes, lost for a response.

Joey stands up and walks away, and Sid doesn't follow.

\---

Sid's morning briefing the next day with the Air Marshalls is hard to stomach. They go over the losses of the previous day's engagements, and discuss responses. They need to stay strong, and take out as many of the enemy as they can. Their numbers pale in comparison to the Germans, but they’re expected to hold their own for long enough to prevent an invasion of Britain - “They’re calling it Operation Sealion, apparently,” Laviolette had laughed. 11 Group, their unit, is spread out in center stations and airfields across the southeast of England, so they see the most action. Biggin-Hill is the largest of the center stations, but it doesn’t mean it’s any easier for them to take the losses they’re currently suffering.

When Sullivan brings up changes to formations, Sid’s breath stops. Thankfully, it’s the last thing they need to get through before Sid can leave. He is told that formations of pilots with more flight hours are being broken up in order for the rookie pilots to fly with experienced guys, in the hope that it will compensate for the decrease in flight hours during the new training programme. He pushes down his instinctive response - simultaneously two completely different reactions - and keeps his face blank.

Sid's formation now consists of himself, Dumoulin and Sheary. Kuni will lead Forsberg and Pouliot, and Horny will fly with Rust and Sissons. He is dismissed.

He doesn't want to risk any of the men seeing him look unsteady or unsure, so he starts for the quiet spot he found in his first few weeks at Biggin-Hill last year. There's a cluster of trees behind Hangar D that offers a place of respite, somewhere he’d escape to when things got too much.

There's always something that needs his attention and Sid generally appreciates that - keeping busy after all is what has brought him this far - but he needs a moment to breathe and react where no one can see him.

When he sits, he allows the sickening relief wash over him first. He's not proud of being relieved that their previous formation has been broken up, especially not because it's the escalating losses that have caused it, but he is horrifyingly glad to be away from Horny.

Sid has not treated him well, is the thing, and he doesn’t like to be reminded of it every time they fly. Horny had initially flown in Josi’s formation but after Duper went down he was shuffled around to replace him. And that is where Sid's problem lies, because how could anyone ever replace Duper?

Duper, who projected a calming presence, even in the middle of battle. Duper, whose first words for anyone were some kind of joke, who would never be able to allow a gloomy atmosphere to linger if he could help it. Duper, who could read Sid as easily as he could read words in black and white on a page.

Duper, whose body is trapped in a wrecked plane at the bottom of the English Channel, who is now nothing more than an ache in Sid’s chest that he cannot get rid of. It takes everything he has to keep it from filling him up until he can no longer breathe for it.

The problem is not that Duper and Horny are so different; it’s that they’re the same, in so many ways. Horny has the same presence, the easy grin, the concern for keeping spirits light, and every time Sid hears his laugh it’s an inescapable reminder of who should also be there but isn’t.

On the back of this relief, though, comes the guilt, and the burden of his responsibility. Dumo and Sheary are good guys, good pilots, and so, so young. Sid feels older than his 25 years, aged with every face he’s had to forget since the war started. Jack, Beau, Nick, Pascal, Pekka. Innocent, fresh-faced youths looking to make a real difference and going down days later, not having lived. Experienced men, good men, lost to a war whose end seems to somehow slip further and further away with every call to scramble. The German guns don’t care who they are - they take them all.

When Sid thinks of Dumoulin and Sheary, he flashes back to Bennett. It was only a few weeks ago he went down, but it feels far longer than that to Sid. They'd found him, only a mile or so from the station, next to his plane. Sid remembers seeing the Messerschmitt tearing into his right wing, and the erratic movements of the Spitfire as Beau tried to keep it out of a spin. He'd survived the crash, somehow, only to die crawling out of the smashed cockpit. They found him half in and half out of it, arms still stretched in front of him to pull himself out. Sid doesn't know whether it's better to find them and know what happened or to never find them and never know, to trust that it was fast and painless.

Sid feels the fragility of the lives of his men in his hands every time they scramble, and he desperately doesn't want to see them wasted.

He continues to breathe through the surges of feeling that make his chest tight until he has himself locked down again, ready to lead. He stands up, and walks back to where he needs to be.

\---

More replacements arrive, the next day. Sid is outside to greet them, and to show them to their quarters. He watches them looking around with wide eyes and bright faces and feels sick to his stomach. The temptation is there to just avoid them, like a lot of the men do with replacements, because it's hard to get to know someone just to see them fall out of the sky and not come back. Sid doesn't have the luxury of choosing to close them out though, so he gives them the tour of the station.

They only have two rookies this time, which is something of a blessing really, but it's still hard to accept that they need them at all. Hard to accept that they're replacing friends. Hard to accept that they're shouldering off their bags onto the beds of people Sid had called his brothers.

He leaves them to settle in while he makes his rounds, checking in on the rest of the squadron. A few weeks ago - though to Sid it feels like years - he would have stopped by to check in and chatted with the various groups the squadron splits into when they're off duty or on standby. Now Sid makes his rounds with a blank face, and only nods in acknowledgement to his men.

He remembers Duper playing cards with Tanger, Kuni, and Flower at their rickety little folding table, pulled out of some rubbish heap somewhere. He approaches the table now, and it's just the same, but there's a visible scar, a space where Duper should be sitting with an ace poking out of his sleeve for emergencies.

He remembers Duper grinning when he explained the aces to Sid. Sid had thought he was just cheating at poker, but it was more. It wasn't just one ace up his sleeve for cards, but an ace on him at all times. It had become a tradition, a superstition, and even as a rookie, that was something that Sid could understand.

"You never know when you'll need a bit of luck," he'd say, winking at Sid. The memory burns, and he thinks about how it obviously wasn't enough to keep him safe, because he never got to play that last ace. It's still in the pocket of his uniform, disintegrating at the bottom of the sea.

Sid moves on towards the rows of planes, ready to fly despite not being on active standby yet. As expected, Josi and the head mechanic Weber are nearby; Roman always likes to hang around Webs while he works on the planes. It was common to hear the two of them laughing together, loud and bright, but now, though they still are as easy to find, there is no joviality. Their conversation today is a quiet murmur, their heads close together.

Sid understands the friendships that his men have made with staff at the station around the base - it’s a source of comfort to him too. He depends on Flower to see him through the day, but Sid feels good knowing that Shea isn’t risking his life every day in the sky, in knowing that if Sid makes it back after a dogfight, Shea will be there, steady and calm, ever-present cigar clamped between his teeth, to look over his engine and clap a big hand on his shoulder in greeting. He can't blame Roman for seeking his company so often, really.

He can't blame Nealer either, for always hanging around the back of the mess hall kitchens to talk to Paulie, the head chef on the base. Sid heads over there now, pleased to find that Nealer at least is smiling, carrying a stack of pots into the kitchens for Paulie. He leaves them to it, trusting Nealer in Paulie's capable hands. Sid doesn't really need to check in on Nealer now he’s been promoted, but it's been a part of his routine for so long that Sid doesn't care to break it. Routines, structure, requirements, they're what keeps Sid on track, what helps him to get through his day without having to think too much about what he's doing. Duper’s traditions, Sid’s routines, they’re ways to feel like they have some kind of control. A minor thing like Nealer being transferred to 18th Squadron as their Wing Commander, to replace Franson who was lost last week, isn't going to break Sid's routine.

As he swings around to the barracks Sid sees Horny, and his conflicted feelings return, though for different reasons. Sid knows his response to Horny is not justifiable by any reasonable standards, and really is not appropriate for someone in his position of leadership. Horny is with the rookies, like he always is, taking their money while they play darts, and giving them a little guidance. Sid is pleased to know that not all of the experienced men are avoiding them, but he is struck again by the sheer sense of loss seeing Horny brings up in him. Horny is a damn fine pilot and a good man, but Sid cannot see him without having to remember Duper, and for that reason Sid avoids him on the ground as much as possible. He doesn't want to deal with those feelings, nor does he have the space to.

It seems like Horny has figured this out and respects it, and Sid is immeasurably glad for it. He knows that he and Kuni don't deserve his understanding, not considering the way they had treated him when he was assigned to their formation. It took Horny shooting down three planes for them to pull their heads out of their asses, and only because one of those planes was in the process of shooting Sid out of the sky. They work undeniably well in the sky together, Horny being one of the few pilots that is able to read Sid's movements and keep up with him to hold the formation together, but they still can't seem to make it work as smoothly on the ground.

Sid makes sure to catch Horny’s eye and hold them until Horny nods in response to Sid’s check in, and he nods back, satisfied. He makes a note to speak to Dumo and Sheary later, his new formation, but for now, he makes his way back to his quarters, half-expecting Flower to already be there.

He’s not wrong, he finds when he pulls the door open and steps inside. Flower’s form, already occupying his usual chair, is visible even before Sid’s eyes have adjusted from the brightness outside. He drops himself into the chair at his desk and rubs his eyes with his thumb and middle finger.

“ _Everything okay?_ ” Flower asks without looking up from his book, and Sid has to take a second to adjust to speaking French. It’s something Flower and the other French Canadians like to do when they think Sid needs to be distracted. They’re usually right in knowing when they need to do it.

“ _Fine. Back on standby at 1300 hours._ ” Sid’s accent is terrible, and his fluency has suffered terribly from lack of use. His basic training had been in Rimouski, but Sid hasn’t been there for at least five years now. He’s surprised he remembers any of it at all.

Flower grins at his mangled reply, and Sid allows himself a small smile. It’s all he can manage between the tightness in his chest that he can’t get rid of, the exhaustion, and the strain of trying to hold off one of the most competent forces he’s ever seen from invading Britain. That he manages to smile at all is a triumph, but Flower has always been able to read him better than anyone else, and he likes to think Flower could say the same about him. He’s a good friend, and they work well together.

For the rest of the morning they talk about anything but the war. Flower reads him his latest letter from Vero, updating him on their daughter. She can walk now, and the thought makes Sid feel warm. Such innocence is a long way from here, and it makes Sid happy to know that it still exists.

When it gets to 1300, they move outside to sit nearer the planes and are joined by the rest of the squadron. Dumo and Sheary tentatively drop into two of the seats near to Sid and Flower, and only relax properly when Sid nods at them. Sid is relieved to see Joey standing on the edge of the spread of men, smoking, even though his back is to them.

They wait. It doesn’t take long for the sirens to sound. They fly.

\---

Other than not knowing how many Luftwaffe aircraft they're going to go up against, where they're going to come from, or who's going to make it back, the days all go by the same way. Breakfast is at 0800, morning briefings until 1000, then Sid takes a walk around the base after to make sure no one needs his attention, and then nothing, until the sirens sound and they have to take off.

Occasionally they monitor the Channel, in an attempt to ward off any attacks on the Atlantic convoys, but 11 Group doesn't tend to go on many patrol missions. It’s more the responsibility of 12 Group, based in the south-west, closer to the ports. 11 Group are the closest to France, so the radar stations that haven’t been damaged too much by the weeks of bombing pick up the German signals first, and they usually get scrambled first because they're closer to intercept.

The Luftwaffe had spent a few weeks targeting Allied radar stations, but recently they've changed their approach to focus on bombing the airfields instead, and the effect is really starting to show. 11 Group’s losses, and the losses from the RAF as a whole, start to mount. Sid's 87th Squadron has fared relatively well; Wilson had taken a heavy damage from a Messerschmitt and been forced to bail. He'd lost his plane, but made it out with only a graze wound from a bullet along his side.

Sid reads in the reports that Vincent from the 47th and Walker and O'Brien from the 8th have been killed in the airfield raids - good kids, a few years younger than Sid, cadets he mentored in his final year at flight school. There are more, so many more that it makes Sid tired, more names than he could ever recognise or remember. Back then, Vincent had been inseparable from his buddy Petrov. Sid hopes the kid is getting by alright now that he's lost Vincent.

They're stretched so thin as it is, and the Germans have increased the fighter escort, and they already weren't faring well in direct combat with the Messerschmitts, but now the Allied forces are hugely outnumbered. It makes Sid's chest tight to think about it, but all they can do is continue to chip away at the enemy and hope something changes soon. He's quietly losing his conviction that they can come out on top, but he is careful to lock that away when he's not alone.

He sees the same thing in the faces of the rest of the squadron. A tiredness that never lifts, a growing resignation. He can't let them see the same thing from him, he needs to keep them fighting, even if it is a fight they look less and less likely to win by the day.

Surprisingly, he sees it least in Joey - though that's not exactly a good thing. Sid has been increasingly frustrated by Joey's flying. They all expected him to be some cocky hotshot before he'd turned up with an emptiness behind his eyes, and while he couldn’t have been more different in person, his behaviour in the air was another matter entirely. Before Jenner bought it, Joey was a bit reckless sure, but he toed the line. But without that steadying influence, Joey pushes and pushes and he won't give up.

There had been a bleakness in his face since Jenner went down, but now there is a hard twist to it brought on by the increasingly aggressive German tactics, some kind of determination to get himself killed by going against protocol in the air. Sid is keeping a close eye on him, and he just hopes he can put a stop to it before Joey really fucks up. He doesn't know what to say to make him realise the risk he poses to himself and the rest of the squadron, and the leader in him conflicts with the part of him that relates so much to Joey. It's hard to make someone who doesn't think much of their own life care about staying alive.

Sid is shaken from his thoughts by Dumo and Sheary sitting beside him in the mess hall, followed by Tanger, Flower, and Kuni. Dumo and Sheary have thankfully gotten over their wide-eyed treatment of Sid, though they’re understandably not prepared to talk back to him yet. Still, he finds that he appreciates their presence at the table, he likes the informality of it. His caution over getting too close to the replacements, or at least these two in particular, wanes with every flight they make it back from. They’re good guys, and they don’t hang on his every word anymore, and they understand that his quietness is not a reflection on them.

He’d gotten Shea over and had helped them to harmonise their guns to converge a lot closer than they were taught in training, and told them which types of ammo to load the guns with. He’d thought he was just sharing tips and nothing more, just trying to maximise their survival rates if they were going to be flying with him, because he didn’t want to have to go through the whole routine of replacement yet again. He realises now that it was more than that, that he genuinely has begun to like the kids. The thought should worry Sid more than it does, even if he is sure that he will live to regret the decision.

Sid looks around the table and allows himself a moment to be glad for those he still has left.

\---

Sullivan pulls him aside the next morning after their briefing and compliments him on his work with the replacement pilots, his leadership and how he’s taking them under his wing. The good feeling of the previous evening has long since disappeared with dreams of faces he’d never see again. Sid thanks Sullivan and leaves as quickly as he can without displaying any discomfort. He feels sick at the compliment.

\---

**20th August.**

One of the replacements flying with Joey gets shot down, and Sid is so, so tired. Murphy was fresh out of training a week ago. At least he managed to stay in the sky long enough to get as low as possible to make the landing more smooth, but it was still bad enough to break both of his legs and four ribs. The others hadn’t been so lucky. Sid's become used to feeling relief over serious injuries, because they mean that at least he won’t have to write a letter of condolence. He'll deal with how fucked that is later, when he doesn't have to tell mothers that their sons have died under his command.

He catches Joey’s eye as they hand over their planes to the maintenance crew and finds what he’s both dreading and glad to see. Joey knows Murphy’s injures are his fault. His face is drawn and his shoulders are hunched under his uniform. Sid hopes to god that this is enough to make Joey realise the extent to which he’s becoming a danger to himself and the people he flies with, the people who depend on him.

Sid saw him pull out of the formation to go after two isolated Luftwaffe fighters, and he knows that Joey is well aware of the risks of breaking formation and flying solo, exposing both himself and the rest of his formation to attack. It was reckless, and fucking stupid, and exactly the shit Joey has been pulling in the weeks since he got here, since Jenner’s death, except now he’s endangered the rest of the squadron and got someone shot down. Sid saw Murphy veer off after Joey, too late for any kind of support, before the German planes cleared the clouds and his focus was needed elsewhere. The next time Sid saw Murphy’s plane it was trailing black smoke and heading for the ground, and there was nothing any of them could do but hope.

Joey can’t hold his eyes, and slopes off to god knows where as soon as the debrief is over. Sid lets him go, disgusted with his conduct.

Sid writes up his report that night, doesn't spare Joey at all, and updates Laviolette and Sullivan at the next morning’s briefing. Sullivan receives the news of Joey’s indiscretion, devoid of context when put into an official report no matter how Sid worded it, with a furrowed brow, but Laviolette focuses on Joey’s kill count. It’s far in excess of anyone else in the squadron, and Sid listens to his praise with gritted teeth, unwilling to speak out of turn but not able to listen without a sinking stomach.

Sid leaves and realises with finality that it’s up to him to keep an eye on Joey, because no one else with any authority over him seems willing to see past his production.

He watches Joey more closely than before, when he was unwilling to look for too long for fear of seeing too much of his own grief, and asks Flower, Kuni, and Tanger to keep tabs on him too. He needs to get on top of his, before they have to bury another pilot.

Sid spends a little more time over at the mechanic workshops than he normally does, because it offers a good vantage point from which to watch the rest of the base, and because he hasn’t seen much of Shea recently. Shea settles Sid’s nerves somehow with his quiet presence, content not to talk but to allow Sid some respite. The sounds of the workshop are as settling as Flower’s page-turning in his quarters, and Shea has the same effect, though they’re both very different people.

The workshop is how he really gets to know Calle. Sid knows him by sight, he makes a point to know who’s on his base, but knows nothing else of him apart from the fact that he was assigned to Forsberg’s plane. He finds that Calle is, in effect, Shea’s shadow for a good portion of the day.

Now he knows Calle a little better, Sid starts to notice him around the base away from the workshop. He’s honestly surprised to find that Calle appears with baffling frequency in Joey’s company. Joey sticks to the outskirts of the squadron when they’re on standby, and no one is brave enough or has the energy to bother attempting to bring him further into the group. Calle, however, has no hesitation over inserting himself in Joey’s space and just staying there. He doesn’t try to make Joey talk, and seems not to be discouraged by Joey’s refusal to acknowledge his presence.

Sid can’t help his eyes drifting back the two of them when they’re together, curious despite himself. He’d be glad that Joey seemed to be connecting to someone, anyone, after the loss of Jenner, but he’s not really sure that Joey is actually opening up to Calle any. It bears watching, though. Sid will take anything at this point.

\---

**30th August.**

They land to chaos.

Their raid was textbook, and Sid is feeling good about the fact that they didn’t have a single casualty for once. That relief disappears the second they break through the clouds on the approach to the base.

They see the fire when they come in the land, and once they climb out of the planes, they see the feverish effort to put them out. Sid doesn’t think there’s a single building that isn’t damaged, though the worst of it seems to be on the left side - the supply buildings and Hangar C. Sid realises that one of the runways is blown to hell when he sees 18th Squadron landing awkwardly in the fields outside of the walls of the base.

87th Squadron gathers behind Sid to take in the mess before he gets it together and splits them up to send them to wherever the fires look worst. Sid himself makes for the officers’ quarters to link up with Sullivan to get the report on the situation.

Nealer joins him on the way, coming down from the mess hall where Sid assumes he checked on Paulie before he got caught up in anything else. Nealer looks harried but not devastated, so Sid is at least reassured that everyone over there is safe.

Sullivan meets them both outside of his office, uncharacteristically but understandably rumpled. He directs them to the workshops and tells them to help them to put out the fires and to keep the buildings as intact as possible, because they’re going to need them more than ever.

When they get there they split up, and Sid spots Shea through the chaos, bellowing orders over the roar of the flames, and he makes his way towards him. Sid is more than happy to allow Shea to retain control of the operation, and does as he’s asked.

They buckle down for a long night.

\---

The next morning they have the 18th on standby while Sid’s squadron is resting, since there’s only enough undamaged runway for one squadron to use at a time.

None of them have slept much, all of the men fighting fires and clearing debris well into the night, so none of them are at their most tolerant. Joey takes it to another level, though.

Sid isn’t even really paying attention, standing with Flower and Shea by the planes and content to stare off into the distance at nothing in particular while they wait for orders, but he can see Joey in his peripheral vision enough that when his body language changes from sullen to aggressive, Sid’s eyes are drawn to it and he witnesses the whole thing.

Filip hasn’t been with the squadron long, but considering how many replacements since they’ve had that haven't lasted half as long, he’s almost an old hand by now. He is, however, new enough that he doesn’t really seem to understand the reasons that nearly everyone else avoids Joey, and he makes a misguided attempt to start a conversation. It doesn’t end well.

Forsberg approaches Joey, who is by his plane with Calle, and he’s nodding along absently to something Calle is explaining to him about what he’s doing to his engine. Calle flashes him a smile, but Joey doesn’t acknowledge him. Sid isn’t really listening to any of what Forsberg is saying, but Sid’s heard enough bullshit in the last month alone that the tone of Joey’s response is more bitter than usual.

“No one cares, Patrik,” Joey grits out, not even looking up, and Sid starts taking a little more notice of the two of them.

Forsberg is taken a little aback at the response, and takes a second to reply, “my name’s Filip, actually.” His tone is hopeful, like he can push through the awkwardness if he tries hard enough.

Joey turns to Filip with a glare, and Filip actually shrinks back a little at the coldness in his face.

“Kid, no one wants to know your fuckin’ name, no one cares. You’re all the same, all you replacements, full of piss and vinegar, can’t wait to get out there. Always so happy, like nothing bad could possibly happen to you. There's a fuckin’ war on, kid! Hundreds of people dying every day and here you are, trying to ingratiate yourself. You’ll be next, the replacements always are!” The volume of his ranting had been growing as he went, and he was shouting by the time he paused for breath. “You come in full of it and three days later you’re fucking dead! So save us the time, and just don’t bother. There’ll be someone else flying your plane in a week.”

There’s a stunned silence following the tirade that lingers, heavy. Even the guys who were having their own conversations have fallen quiet.

No one knows where to look. Filip is standing uncomfortably, face blank and determinedly not making eye contact with Joey. Sid considers saying something, but honestly he doesn’t know what he would say. What Joey said wasn’t exactly wrong, and they all know it. Still, he makes his way over with Shea following behind him, because Joey is an unpredictable element, and this cannot escalate any more than it already has with the state things are currently in.

Joey breathes heavily before he leaves. Sid lets him go.

Calle moves to follow him, but Shea puts out an arm to hold him back without even looking around, like he knew instinctively that Calle would want to go with Joey.

“Look, just… don’t talk to Johansen. He’s not worth it.” Calle’s face twists, but he doesn’t contradict his commanding officer.

Calle is the only one whose company Joey has shown any kind of tolerance for since Jenner died, and Sid assumes it’s for the same reasons that he and Roman seek out Shea’s company so often, or why the first place anyone looks for Nealer if he’s not in his quarters is the base kitchens. The only difference is that at least the others also spend time with other pilots too. Joey doesn’t seem to be able to stand the company of the other airmen at all.

Sid honestly understands, he gets the struggle of seeing people wearing the same uniforms taking up the space someone who’s dead, but they don’t have the fucking time for this. None of them do. There’s no point in talking to Joey while he’s like this, though - he resolves to take it to command.

\---

**1st September.**

During the next morning’s briefing with Sullivan and Laviolette Sid brings up brings Joey up once they’ve gone through the day’s business. He doesn’t outright put him out for the wolves, though he knows a lot of the guys on the base wouldn’t blame him for doing so, but he needs to make it clear that Joey needs some serious time on the ground to get his shit together.

Somehow Sid isn’t actually that surprised when Laviolette won’t hear a word of it, and brings Joey’s numbers up again. He just can’t see that no matter how many of the Luftwaffe Joey might shoot down, he’s also a risk of driving down RAF numbers too. They won’t hear of grounding him, though. Laviolette tells Sid that it wouldn’t do to hobble the guy that’s potentially keeping them in the war, and that’s the end of it.

They offer him a weekend pass for the squadron, the best they can do with the personnel rotations and the manpower they currently have.

Sid leaves with the passes, resignation and defeat sitting heavy in his gut.

\---

**2nd September.**

Sid knows from the chatter over the last few days that the majority of his men are going to London on their weekend pass. Flower and Tanger both repeatedly try to persuade him to give in and come with them, but Sid can’t face the noise and crush of London, not if he doesn’t have to. He grew up in the country and he never got used to big cities.

Instead, he buys a ticket and stays on the train until it stops. He has no idea where he is but he doesn’t really care. All he knows is that it looks like a small farming village, and that suits him just fine.

He walks through the village, taking it all in, until he gets to a pub that has a sign outside of it advertising available rooms. When he walks in it takes him a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside after being outside in the sun. It’s only 1200 hours, so the place is practically empty and there’s only one person behind the bar.

With only a little fuss, Sid manages to get a room. The barmaid turns out to be the owner of the pub, and she introduces herself as Emily. She won’t hear of putting him in a single room after seeing him in his service dress and leads the way to the biggest room they have, pointing out the bathroom on the way. She leaves him sitting on the huge, plush double bed with his key and instructions to ask at the bar if he needed anything.

He takes in the room around him. It’s nice, is all he can really say. It’s clean and bright, lace curtains moving in the slight breeze coming from the window. It’s a place to sleep, and it’s not a lumpy cot like the bed in his quarters at the base.

Once he’s refolded the clothes from his kit bag neatly and laid them out on top of the dresser, he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. A walk around the village seems the most sensible thing to do. He feels restless without knowing the terrain, and he needs to get out, to scout his surroundings. Potential entry and exit points, where would be the best place to mount an offensive, or where would be best to fall back and defend from. It’s a habit Sid doesn’t think he’ll ever break.

The village is beautiful. There are perfectly tended flower beds, immaculate lawns and greens, and breathtaking views out over the rolling fields all the way to the horizon. Somehow the weather is also perfect, temperate and bright but with a refreshing breeze. It’s a far cry from the muggy and overcast days at Biggin-Hill, and Sid soaks it in while he can.

The route he follows takes him into the heart of the village and towards the market square. He can hear it from a mile off, and when it finally comes into view it’s bustling with people. The market stalls look enticing and he wants to walk through the square and see everything they’re selling, but he can’t make himself face that many people at once, so he carries on through the streets.

As he walks the buildings begin to turn into houses, and then eventually the houses begin to thin out as he moves from the village into the farms and fields. He follows a rocky path just to the side of the road that winds up through the trees to see where it goes, and ends up at a gate, and the path carries on up to one of the farmsteads.

He makes his way back, taking a different route wherever he can so he can see more of the village. By the time he gets back to the market square over an hour later, the bustle has gone down quite a bit, so he chances a look around.

The stalls are still packed with produce, huge vegetables and delicious-looking fruit. He stops by a stall with boxes of fresh apples, and reaches for his wallet. They don’t get much more than standard rations at Biggin-Hill and Sid’s sweet tooth can’t resist the opportunity. He watches the man’s face light up as he takes in Sid’s service dress.

“Oh no, please just take them, as many as you like, they’re free for a war hero!” He hands Sid a bag of apples as Sid tries to protest, and the fuss attracts the attention of the other people around them in the square.

Suddenly the bag of apples is no longer in his grasp, and in place of them are people’s hands, shaking his. They thank him for his service, for his sacrifice, for keeping them safe. They call him handsome, invite him to their houses for tea or to meet their daughters, and they all try to touch him, slapping his back and cuffing his shoulders if his hands aren’t free.

Sid can’t breathe, but he attempts to smile as best he can through the sudden onslaught of attention as he tries to extract himself from it without appearing to do so. It’s hard, when for every five steps he takes, five new people who haven’t had a chance to shake his hand yet join the throng.

When he manages to get away from the square he heads straight back towards the pub he’s staying in, desperate for some quiet to pull himself together. It’s not even that he minds it really; he knows the English people are friendly, especially to those in the military and those who are stationed here, and that they mean well, but it’s just a lot for him to handle at once.

He doesn’t really see what there is to thank him for. He joined the Air Force before the war even started, so he’s not here out of any kind of patriotic duty, really. He joined because his father had been in the Army, a Major, and he’d been raised for this. He was expected to join up as soon as he turned eighteen, that much was clear. He’d delayed it until he was twenty, going to college and graduating first, but then it was straight into service. He’d chosen the Air Force simply because it was the first option that wasn’t the Army.

Sid leaves his room a few hours later only because he hasn’t eaten all day. He goes downstairs and quietly orders a steak and ale pie and a pint, but Emily stops him from paying before he can even reach into his pocket.

He waits in resignation for her to go through the whole speech of not taking money from a hero, but she surprises him by banging on the bar top and calling for silence.

“Alright, listen up you lot, we’ve got an actual war hero right here in the pub! I want you all to raise your glasses to him, to thank him for defending this green and pleasant land.”

To Sid’s horror, the whole pub cheers and raises their glasses towards him. He’s never felt more uncomfortable in his entire life.

He finally gets his food and sits down at one of the only free tables left. It takes forever to eat his meal, because he has to constantly refuse offers to buy him a drink. He’s trying not to be disrespectful to the patrons, who only mean well, but he just wishes they’d leave him alone. He’s not a huge drinker at the best of times, and with every offer he becomes more and more embarrassed. He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t feel like he’s done anything to earn it other than doing his job.

Some of them don’t bother to ask Sid if they can buy him a drink, they just put one down in front of him and grin at him. Sid smiles back weakly, and takes a mouthful of it so that they’ll leave. He ends up with at least four pints being bought for him, on top of the one he ordered with his food. It’s not like he can just leave them, he doesn’t want to appear ungrateful, and so he drinks them all. He’s just thankful he’s drinking on a full stomach. He escapes upstairs as soon as he’s drained the last glass.

The night seems to go on forever. Sid feels exhausted for some reason, even though he hasn’t done much, but when he finally gets into bed and lies down to sleep, he’s suddenly wide awake. He’s so aware of everything around him, the smell of the fresh bedding is caustic in his nose, the bed is far too soft to get comfortable in after years of sleeping in hard bunks, and it’s far, far too quiet. Every noise in amplified in the near-silence. He hears the dripping tap, the ticking of the clock, the creaking of the building. His own breathing sounds like a roar.

He regrets drinking the pints that were bought for him, even though he knows he had no choice but to accept them. Alcohol never helps him sleep; instead it keeps him awake and on edge for hours. His head spins when he first lies down, and every time he turns over in a never-ending search for a comfortable position.

When he actually gets off to sleep, sometimes after 0200 hours, the dreams begin. He sees the deaths of so many men again and again, like a newsreel that he can’t stop. He hears voices he lost the sound of months ago, and sees memories he’s tried to forget. He dreams of Taylor, dead in a dank prison cell, a single bullet wound in her temple.

He gasps himself awake after every dream, sweating and panting, becoming more and more agitated every time he sees that only thirty minutes or an hour has passed since the last time he woke up.

When he wakes to see the sky outside turning pink he gives up on sleep altogether. He sits up and has to take a second to hold his head in his hands when he gets upright against the throbbing in his temples. It’s not the worst hangover he’s had by far, but it still doesn’t feel good on top of a restless night.

It’s too early for breakfast, but Sid’s not hungry anyway. He decides to take a walk in the woods to the south to get away from everyone until he can pull himself together a bit better, hoping that the fresh air will do him good. He’s not quite ready to be around the villagers yet with their endless enthusiasm and loud voices. His shoulders are already tense, he feels on edge after such a bad night, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with people calling him a war hero. What right has he to that title if he’s still here, sleeping in a feather bed and eating good food?

Unfortunately, his plan doesn’t quite work out. Even this early in the morning there are people in the woods with their dogs, and the milkman and postman both stop him on the street to thank him for his service. He’s so resigned to it that he doesn’t even stop to think about how they know exactly who he is with just his shirt and dress pants on, or how they know something he said to someone else yesterday, just accepts their hand and tries not to be too rude about getting away from them as soon as possible.

He walks around for hours and the sun steadily rises in the sky. After the dog walkers thin out come the farmers, the mothers and their children on the way to school, near everyone stopping him to get a chance to talk to the village’s famous visitor.

Eventually he gives up on trying to calm his nerves - he’s more anxious than when he left his room, really - and returns to his room to dress properly for the day, hearing his father in the back of his mind chewing him out for looking sloppy and being a poor representative of his unit and his force.

When he goes down to the bar to order some lunch he’s relieved to see that the pub is largely empty again, with only a few people dotted around the room. He places his order and turns to sit down when he hears the men to his left laugh.

“What’s a bloody Yank doing here? Thought your lot didn’t care about the likes of us anymore?” The man is middle-aged, Sid thinks, but looks older. His friend in the other side of the booth has the same look about him. Their mouths sport smiles, scathing, but their eyes are hard.

“Actually, sir, I’m Canadian,” Sid replies, as polite as he can manage.

Both of the men’s faces change the second Sid finishes speaking, their scowls fading into open, pleased smiles.

“Sit down, lad! Haven’t had a chance to talk to one of you since the last war,” he laughs, and moves over to make space for Sid in the booth.

“Oh, thank you bu-,” Sid starts, but he gets cut off.

“I won’t hear of it, sit down, man!” He presses, and Sid relents. He doesn’t have the energy to argue with them.

The first man introduces himself as Raymond - “call me Ray” - and his friend introduces himself as Peter. Sid shakes their hands and waits with resignation for the inevitable war hero speech, but it never comes.

Ray begins to talk, and Sid suddenly realises why. They’re both veterans of the Great War, so they couldn’t give a damn if Sid is fighting a war or not, because they’ve already been through the same and worse. Sid feels himself relax slightly, letting down his guard now he doesn’t have to accept the undeserved praise that he hasn’t been able to get away from the rest of the weekend.

Emily brings his food over and he eats it while they talk, and he pitches to answer questions they ask of him. As Ray and Peter talk and Sid listens, he relaxes more and more. They get it, is the thing. They know the disconnect that exists between civilian and military life, and they get how hard it is to suddenly switch between the two.

They remind him of the guys back on the base, and that helps to soothe his brittle nerves too. By the time they both start telling Sid all of the things they learned about Canada from fighting in the trenches with men from the Canadian army, Sid can’t seem to wipe the small smile off his face. Not that he tries, really.

“There was this one bloke, massive fella he was, told me that they raced moose every winter. They had saddles for him and everything, he said! I didn’t even know what a moose looked like, then.”

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of Sid, totally unexpected, but he doesn’t try to stop himself. It’s honestly the best he’s felt in a long time, even back on the base. It’s like sitting with Flower and Tanger, or even Duper, but it doesn’t hurt as much. In the same way, telling them about Canada, about home, should be hard, but somehow it isn’t. He can talk about home and his family without the fear or guilt that usually accompanies it.

Sid stays with them all afternoon and doesn’t get bothered once about being some hotshot hero and he’s so thankful for it. He doesn’t feel nearly as fragile as he did that morning. It’s nice to actually have a break without constantly feeling the weight of responsibility and loss pressing down on him - it’s what he was hoping to find by coming to this village rather than London.

They’re all a little worse for wear when Ray and Peter finally run out of stories and start to make noises about heading home. Sid stands as well, needing to get his things and hand back his key before going to the train station.

“Take care of yourself, son,” Peter says when he shakes Sid’s hand, and Sid smiles back, genuine.

“I will, thank you, sir,” he replies. Ray slaps his shoulder when he shakes his hand, and then they leave.

Sid returns to his room to pack his kit bag, and is back down at the bar within five minutes to return the key. He tries to pay for the room, but once again Emily refuses him. He’s resigned to it now, and at least she doesn’t call him a hero this time. He thanks her for her hospitality, and she grins in return.

He feels content, as he sits on a bench at the station waiting for his train to show up. Ready to return to the base, but better for having had time away. It was nearly a very different situation, he probably would have been on a train by noon were it not for Ray and Peter, but nonetheless he feels good.

He shuts his eyes when he finds a seat on the train in an empty carriage, and dozes his way back to Biggin-Hill.

\---

Things don’t get better. Even avoiding contact with the German fighters, they just can't seem to minimise the impact of the bombing raids on 11 Group, no matter how many of the bombers they shoot down. They’re being scrambled two or three times in a day, and even though they’re rotating which squadrons respond, they’re stretched thin.

Their supplies are being rationed as much as they can be, because their supply lines have been cut and no one knows when they’ll be cleared. They can’t get any new pilots in to relieve the pressure or to fill up the spaces that just keep opening up.

When they realise they can’t salvage the barracks that got hit or burned down, they have to double up on sleeping arrangements. It mostly works out with how often they’re being rotated, and pretty much everyone has somewhere to sleep for a few hours a day, but it’s not the most restful environment. It adds to the exhaustion that’s dragging them down, both mental and physical, but they carry on as best they can.

There’s an atmosphere that lingers over the base now, a tension that just won’t seem to dissipate. They don’t know how reflective of the rest of the central stations and airfields theirs is, but the reports coming in from fighter command aren’t exactly reassuring. Sid knows, from Sullivan, that the RAF as a whole is struggling, and he has no desire to spread that news. Better for the men to know nothing - at last they way they can hope for the best.

Every day becomes a grind, a herculean effort to get through every day that they’re stuck on the wrong end of a battle of attrition.

They all feel it, and it comes out in different ways. Sid keeps himself busy so he can’t think about it all, just gets on with what he needs to do. Flower’s easy smile is dimmed. Horny becomes quiet and still, none of his general enthusiasm present. Nealer spends even more time with Paulie than before, ostensibly supervising the rationing but more likely hiding from the uneasy climate. Roman and Filip retreat to the workshops with Calle and Shea. Tanger becomes silent, watching everything with sharp eyes and a short fuse.

Joey prowls. He can’t stand still, wound tight and restless. He walks around the base, up and down over and over again. The rest of them keep out of his way, not prepared to trigger another explosion of his temper after Filip. None of them have the patience or the energy for it, or for him really.

Sid finds himself growing more and more irritated with him as the days pass. He knows they brought Joey in from France to ensure they had enough skilled guys and someone who was in a position to give newer pilots the experience they miss out on now that training has had to be accelerated. Yet here he is, putting them at risk by flying without a care for squadron integrity or personal safety, and the newer pilots are terrified and won’t go within 10 feet of him.

Sid thinks about it a lot, about entitlement and sacrifice for duty, and he twists himself up until the resentment begins to grow again. He tries to ignore it as much as he can, pushing it down to the same place he holds his grief that he doesn’t have the time to set free. The atmosphere is so tense that a spark would be enough to ignite tempers, and Sid doesn’t want to be the catalyst for an incident.

They sleep in fits and starts, grabbing a few minutes of rest whenever they can, wherever they can. It’s not uncommon to find men asleep in the grass or propped up against walls, sometimes in groups of three or four. Occasionally Sid catches sight of Calle sitting with Joey, and it’s the only time Sid sees him staying still for more than a few seconds at a time, but he never sees him sleeping.

They persevere, because there is no choice but to carry on as best they are able, but it takes so much out of them. Their last break only lasted a matter of hours, barely long enough to refuel, refresh, and sleep. Weekend passes seem like a dream, like something far, far from this reality. The weather takes a turn, the last throes of summer giving in to an approaching autumn, and it never seems to stop raining. The fields turn to mud and the sky is grey and oppressive.

They carry on.

\---

Tanger, Sid and Flower spend an afternoon playing cards huddled around their tiny table. They’re not playing for anything, Tanger and Flower both knowing better than to bait Sid’s competitive streak.

Sid’s just lost his hand but is distracted from that when one of the ground crew approaches.

“Sir, sorry to interrupt,” Fitzgerald pauses, like he doesn’t want to deliver his news, and Sid motions for him to continue, “but Dumoulin and Sheary haven’t come back from patrol yet.”

Sid frowns and looks at his watch. It’s 1425 hours, and their patrol was meant to end around 1400 hours, so it’s not entirely out of the ordinary for them not to have returned yet.

“Give them another hour, they might have had contact with a vessel or enemy craft.”

“Yes, sir,” Fitzgerald nods, and hurries off back to where the ground crew is gathered near the landing strip.

Sid knows patrols aren’t exactly easy to time, sometimes you come back on the dot because nothing was happening, but sometimes you get back late because you had to monitor a situation or bad weather changes your route. He’s a little on edge today, though, but he can’t put his finger on what exactly is bothering him.

They play a few more hands but Sid becomes increasingly distracted, listening out for the sound of approaching planes that never comes.

Eventually, Flower has enough.

“ _Sid, go and see what’s going on,_ ” he sounds exasperated, but his mouth is tugged up in a smile. He knows how Sid gets.

“ _You’re no challenge when you’re like this, and god knows it’s easy enough to beat you at the best of times,_ ” Tanger chimes in, and Flower laughs as he shuffles the cards.

Sid smiles in good humour and gets up. Flower deals himself and Tanger in for blackjack.

He checks his watch impatiently as he walks, but it’s only half an hour into the hour he’d given Fitzgerald.

Sid waits at the landing strip for an hour, for two, and still nothing. He gives them as much time as he can, not wanting to have to make the call. He waits for a little longer before he gives in and tells the ground crew to stand down.

The walk to Sullivan’s office seems longer than usual, and yet it’s over far too soon. He knocks on the door, and is summoned in.

Sid explains the situation at Sullivan’s prompt, and waits patiently while Sullivan thinks on their course of action.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to take two others out and do a basic sweep of their patrol route, see if there’s anything amiss. If there’s nothing, I want you back here sharp. We’ll decide what we do next when you get back.”

He rounds up Flower and Tanger, still sitting at their rickety card table but no longer playing. They suit up while Sid goes to alert the ground crew again and then he goes to suit up himself.

The sweep takes only an hour, and they see nothing out of place. Sid’s heart sinks. They could have both gone down over the water, and there’d be nothing left by now, any debris probably already dispersed far enough that they wouldn’t find it. The uncertainty will eat at him, he knows. At least if they’d found a burning wreck, they’d know for sure that Dumo and Sheary were definitely dead and that there would be nothing they could do.

They return, and Sullivan nods gravely at Sid’s report. He doesn’t dismiss Sid straight away, but keeps him in the office while he updates Dumo and Sheary’s personnel files. He looks away when Sullivan picks up the stamp, and just like that they’re officially missing in action.

\---

**4th September.**

Brennan from 12 Group gets caught in Joey’s crossfire in his hell-bent crusade to take down every German plane he sees. Sid makes sure to follow up on him with Laich, 23rd Squadron’s leader, to make sure that Joey hadn’t actually killed someone. It turns out that Brennan managed to eject and land safely, thank fuck, but next time who’s to say what will happen to whoever gets caught up in Joey’s revenge quest or death wish or whatever the hell it is he’s doing.

Enough is enough, Sid thinks. Joey is out of control, and if fighter command won’t do something about it then Sid is going to have to. He can’t let this go on any longer and risk someone getting killed. It’s one thing to expose their pilots and put the squadron in danger from the Luftwaffe, but it’s another thing entirely to come this close to causing the death of one of their own men.

Sid paces in his quarters, Flower uncharacteristically absent. He needs someone to sound off to, someone to bounce ideas off over how to handle Joey, because every way he’s thought of so far to get him under control isn’t going to work. Talking to him didn’t seem to make a difference, and leaving him to work through it on his own isn’t an option anymore. He gives up and grabs his cap from the desk and leaves for the mechanic workshops, in need of someone to keep his thoughts straight and knowing that Shea’s steady, reliable presence can provide that.

He finds Shea lounging in a chair around the side of the workshop, face tilted into the last of the evening sun. Activity goes on across the base without respite, people moving around like ants trying to clear up the last of the debris and fix the damage done to the base by the relentless attacks by the Luftwaffe, but Sid doesn’t blame Shea for taking a break while he can. The mechanics could have had an easy time of it really, considering that there’s still only enough runway for one squadron to operate at a time so there are only twelve planes to check over at any one time, but they pitch in to help repair the base whenever they can so they’ve been just as busy as the pilots.

Shea cracks his eyes, and when he realises it’s Sid he opens them fully, pulling himself up in the chair and chewing on the stub of his cigar.

“Sir.” Shea smiles wryly, Sid’s discomfort with someone older than him calling him ‘sir’ an old joke between them. It had always seemed ridiculous coming from a man like Shea, anyway

“Sid.” Sid corrects him without even thinking about it, an automatic response by now.

“What can I do for you?”

Sid pulls up one of the other chairs scattered around and lowers himself into it tiredly, resting his elbows on his thighs and bringing his hands up in front of his mouth in thought.

“How do I get through to him?” Sid can hear the weariness in his voice.

“Ah,” Shea breathes out expansively, “we're talking about Johansen, then?”

“How do you get through to someone who doesn't care about living?” Sid carries on, turning towards Shea, “not even risking his own guys seems to get to him.”

“He's definitely a tricky one.”  

“I’ve tried anything I can think of that that might work, but none of it seems to make it through. He’s so closed off it just goes right over him.” Sid stops to breathe, cutting himself off his building rant. He wants to stay calm.

“He's not special. He's acting like he thinks he's the only guy to lose a friend.” Shea shrugs and blows out a stream of smoke.

“We don't have that luxury right now,” Sid sighs. It’s the same thing he has to tell himself every morning. “The entire RAF is close to breaking point and the Germans just keep fucking coming.”

He slumps back into his chair and looks out over the flat fields in front of him. Shea allows the silence, waiting patiently while Sid organises his thoughts. His calm, unhurried demeanour is the reason Sid came to him.

“He's a danger to the people around him,” he manages eventually.

“What did the brass say?”

Sid scoffs. “They're not going to ground him with one of the best records in England, not when we’re stretched this thin. They don’t seem to get that if Joey carries on he’s going to make that even worse.”

“You hear about Petrov?”

Sid closes his eyes for a second. He’d been trying not to think about Petrov and Joey at the same time. It was far too similar really, a man becoming reckless after the death of a friend and getting himself killed for nothing. He’d known Petrov, just starting flight school as Sid was finishing, and it was a waste. He doesn’t want Joey to end up the same way.

“Yeah, I heard about him. Joey’s going the same way.” They share a look of understanding, and Shea says nothing in reply. They both know what it means.

Shea’s eyes flick up over Sid’s head, and Sid turns around to see Calle, hovering at the corner of the workshop. Sid gestures him over with a nod of his head.

“Sorry, Sir, I didn’t want to interrupt. I was looking for Sergeant Weber, he’s needed in the shop.”

Sid turns to smile at Shea, more a press of his lips than anything else, as Shea gets to his feet to follow Calle. He lands a hand on Sid’s shoulder as he passes.

He watches them as they go, but Calle hesitates and turns around to face Sid. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then closes it again, uncertain.

“What is it?” He asks, to give Calle to push to spit it out.

“He has a brother,” he says eventually, and it takes Sid a second to realise why he’s telling him this. Sid pulls himself up again in the chair. “Lucas. He’s almost eighteen, I think, sir. He writes to Joey sometimes, talks about how he can’t wait to join up like his big brother.”

“Thank you.” Sid nods, and Calle hurries away after Shea.

Sid stands and heads back towards the rest of the base with purpose. He needs to find a personnel file.

\---

There is a knock at the door of Sid’s office. He doesn’t look up from the report that he’s reading, but shouts for the person to enter. Joey walks in, looking uncomfortable but with his back straight and his shoulders set. He leaves him standing by the door until he looks up from the papers in his hands a minute later.

“Brennan’s alive, by the way. The guy you got shot down. Just so you know, since you haven’t asked. Extensive injuries, might not walk again, but he’s alive. No more war for him, eh? Maybe he’s the lucky one. Maybe you did him a favour.” Joey doesn’t acknowledge him, eyes fixed somewhere just over Sid’s shoulder.

He motions to the only chair currently in the room, at the desk. Joey sits, sullen.

Sid stands and walks around the desk to stand next to Joey, dropping Petrov’s file in front of him. The silence between them is thick, tense.

“Open the file, Johansen.” Sid’s voice carries no inflection or intonation, only a clear command and the expectation of compliance.

Joey complies and flips the cover of the file, then looks back to Sid.

He nods to himself imperceptibly, slightly adjusting his plan of attack to account for Joey's obstinacy.

“Read me the report. The whole thing.”

Joey doesn’t move, like he’s expecting Sid to deliver the punchline, but there isn’t one. Finally, he begins to read.

_Battle report for 29th August 1940_

_Wing Commander P. M. Lapointe_

_9th Squadron engaged in action with Luftwaffe forces at approx. 1100 hours. We made contact with the enemy over Canterbury. Enemy forces were in excess of approx. 36 bomber craft and approx. 108 fighter craft, in tight formation. 9th Squadron approached from below in order to gain access to the bombers and bypass the fighter escort._

The report doesn’t tell the full story, doesn’t mention Vincent’s recent death though it undoubtedly influenced the incident, but he thinks Joey will be able to connect the dots and understand Sid’s intentions here.

_Casualties include LACs Petrov and Carmen. Petrov engaged fighters in order to break up the escort formation to provide access to the bomber aircraft, despite orders not to engage. Approx. 3 Messerschmitt craft opened fire on Petrov, forcing him to break formation._

Joey’s voice shifts just slightly, subtle enough that no one who wasn’t listening for it would hear it, but enough that Sid knows Joey sees what he’s getting at here. He carries on though, pausing only to turn a page.

_Petrov’s craft was damaged by enemy fire and began to stall. Petrov clipped an enemy fighter and lost a portion of his wing, causing him to lose control of the Hurricane. The engine caught fire, and Petrov steered his craft into an enemy fighter which was flying approx. 100 feet below him. Upon contact with the enemy craft both erupted into flames and began to fall steeply. No parachute was seen before both craft reached the ground at full speed._

When he finishes, Joey lets go of the folder like it’s too hot to touch, and it drops back onto the desk. It takes him a second to look up at Sid, and when he does the agitation in his eyes doesn’t quite match the stubborn set of his jaw. Sid needs to play his final card.

He doesn’t really want to use it, he knows it’s playing dirty, but Joey leaves him no choice.

Sid holds his eyes for a few seconds longer before he speaks.

“Dismissed.” Sid sits on the edge of his desk as Joey stands up, and reaches into his drawer to retrieve another folder as he turns to make for the door, letting Joey think that he’s going back to his paperwork and he can let his guard down.

“One more thing, Johansen,” he calls, his tone still flat and unreadable, trying to make Joey believe he’s barely interested. “You have a brother, right?”

Sid sees Joey freeze out of the corner of his eye as he scans the file, and he continues.

“He must be what, almost eighteen? Almost old enough to join up.” Joey’s shoulders are hunched, and his face, what Sid can see of it, is furious.

“I bet you’re his idol, right? Wants to be just like his heroic brother, saving Britain from the Nazis.”

Joey makes for the door with quick strides, struggling with the handle in his haste to leave. Sid doesn’t stop him.

“Johansen,” he calls, “don’t let him down.”

The door slams behind him, and Sid is alone again. He snaps the file shut and allows it to dangle between his fingers as he deflates.

\---

He’s pulled the chair back around to the right side of the desk and is working on a report of his own when Tanger finds him, maybe ten minutes later.

“That bad?” Tanger drops onto Sid’s bunk, artfully sprawled rather than sitting, even now.

“I had to go hard, and I didn’t want to,” Sid sighs, rubbing his face. He turns towards Tanger and abandons the report.

“ _Crisse_ , Sid, take your own advice. How many times have you told us about the needs of the many? He’s not just a danger to himself anymore, and you’re the one who has to fix it.”

Tanger smirks a little when he Sid’s shoulders drop a little, knowing he has him already. He can’t exactly argue against himself, and Tanger is right anyway. He knows he did what was necessary, what needed to be done for the squadron, but he still doesn’t like what he had to do. Sid doesn’t know that he wouldn’t have reacted the same if someone had used Taylor against him. Even imagining her name in Sullivan’s mouth is enough to set Sid’s teeth on edge.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tanger continues, “I saw him on the way over. Looked like the little mechanic had him handled okay.”

It does make him feel a little better, but not by much.

“What did you want, anyway?” Sid asks, an attempt to cut off further conversation about Joey.

“ _Flower told me to check on you,_ ” Tanger smirks. Sid feels his lips tug up into a little smile at the French, a familiar comfort, even if it was also sometimes exasperating.

“ _You can tell Flower to check on me himself if he needs to, or to leave me alone_ ,” he manages, slowly and painfully but feeling lighter for it.

“ _You know he will not listen_ ,” Tanger stands and slaps him on the back.

Sid smiles tiredly him.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he says, and Tanger pats him again.

“ _Thank Flower, not me. I don’t care_ ,” he grins, and Sid huffs a laugh.

Tanger turns, holding the door open, and raises an eyebrow at him, “sleep, Sidney.”

“Goodnight,” is all he says, and Tanger leaves.

Sid does, undeniably, feel lighter for it, and he is thankful for his friends’ concern. He holds on to it for as long as he can and falls asleep almost happy.

\---

**6th September.**

Time doesn’t slow down when it happens. Sid’s vision doesn’t narrow to the other plane as it goes down in flames, his heart doesn’t stop in his chest, his eyes don’t fill with tears.

He doesn’t react, really. He feels numb. He knows it happened and, he watches it happen, but there is no impact, It just doesn’t seem to penetrate the haze. He carries on flying, tracking a bomber that’d dropped a little lower than the others at the head of the formation, and lines up his crosshairs to take it out.

He doesn’t collapse to the ground when he climbs out of his Spitfire. His knees aren’t weak, he doesn’t fall into anyone’s arms. He switches out with the maintenance crew, and he walks to the Officers’ quarters to give his report in person.

It’s not until he returns to his quarters later and sees a battered pulp novel left on the chair in the corner of his room that it really hits him. Flower is gone.

He remembers last night, when they’d both sat in here and talked about the book. Sid had been tense, a regular occurrence, so Flower had spent an hour reading random passages of the book to him in French and laughing when he lost half of the meaning because of his rusty French. He remembers thinking about how grateful he was that Flower was there, that he was so good at reading Sid and doing exactly what he needed to get him to unwind, even just a little bit.

And now he’s gone.

Sid expects there to be a breaking point, some kind of wall that crumbles and suddenly a torrent of emotion will drown him, but there’s nothing. He sits on his bed and he stares at the book lying on the chair and he feels utterly blank.

He thinks he should feel something like he did after Duper, the crushing despair and the tightness in his chest, but there’s just nothing. No sadness, no guilt, no fear. He’s carried Duper’s death for so long, but it feels distant now. His world is reduced to what’s in front of him, what he can see and hear. It’s as if any unnecessary information just washes over him, and all he has left to deal with is what he needs to do to keep functioning as a pilot, as a Wing Commander, as a cog in the defence of England.

He has no idea how long he’s been sitting there when he catches sight of his watch and realises it’s gone 1800 hours, and knows he needs to get up if he wants to eat. He’s not hungry, but he flew for hours today and his body needs fuel so he can do it again tomorrow. He stands up mechanically, straightening his uniform and pulling his cap on.

The walk to the mess hall isn’t so much a blur as he just doesn’t take anything in. Objectively, it’s no different to any other time he’s done this, three times a day for the last eleven months since he got to England. Sure, the path is a little rougher after being covered in rubble from the bombings, the grass isn’t as green as it was in the spring after being baked in the summer sun, and the buildings he passes aren’t quite intact anymore, but nothing else has really changed. Except that it has.

Dinner is much of the same, really. Sid sits at his usual place, though now there’s four empty spaces around him. Tanger doesn’t show until almost the end of dinner, eyes bloodshot and his uniform rumpled. Sid can smell the alcohol on him already. He takes it all in but has no reaction to it other than hoping Tanger isn’t too late to get something to eat. Paulie will probably take pity on him though, softened to the 87th boys through Nealer. It vaguely occurs to him that Paulie would probably take pity on him for a different reason too, the death of a friend like Flower enough to warrant a meal even this late, but the thought makes no impact and it drifts away.

Sid makes his way down to the kitchen window to get some food for him, and Paulie hands it over without him having to ask for it. He smiles encouragingly, but Sid doesn’t have it in him to react. He takes the plate back to the table and sets it in front of Tanger.

Sid stays until he’s eaten it all, because Tanger needs something to soak up the booze. They’re stretched enough as it is, and he can’t have one of his guys hungover if they need to fly tomorrow. Tanger won’t look up at Sid, eyes fixed on his plate, but he’s not particularly bothered by it.

The only difference really, between tonight and any other night they’ve eaten together in the mess hall, is that this time, when Tanger tips his flask towards Sid after he’s taken a long pull from it as they’re walking back to their quarters, Sid accepts it without hesitation and takes a swig. It burns going down - neat whiskey was never his drink of choice - and honestly, it’s the best thing he’s felt all day.

He and Tanger part to return to their quarters without any words, because there is nothing to say. Sid doesn’t stay to watch Tanger stumble a little down the path to make sure he gets to his barracks without an issue, he just keeps walking.

When he gets inside he goes about his usual evening routine, following it to a tee. He straightens his desk after taking care of any stray reports to be taken to Sullivan in the morning, washes his face in the basin on the wall, neatly folds his uniform and sets it on top of the footlocker at the bottom of his bed. He turns off the lamp on his desk before he climbs into bed.

The routine helps him feel settled, secure. A routine is dependable, it doesn’t change unless you change it, doesn't disappear unless you stop doing it. It’s always helped Sid to keep control over his surroundings when so much is simply out of his hands.

The comfort only lasts as long as the routine does, however. It doesn’t stop Sid from staring at the book sitting on the chair instead of sleeping when he lies down in his bunk, eyes fixed on where he knows it is even though he can’t actually see it. He stares through the dark to the chair, and waits for sleep or the morning, uncaring which comes first.

\---

**7th September.**

The RAF had scrambled to intercept at the wrong point, a huge fleet of bombers on the way to London without any opposition, too late for RAF forces to reach the German planes, London demolished, 448 civilians dead.

When Sid reads the report he feels nothing. He knew it wasn’t going to be good from the look on Sullivan’s face as he handed the file over, and the language of the report makes the events described sound clinical and cold. It’s just numbers to Sid. The only dead he can think of are the pilots lost up until that point - probably around the same number lost in the raid last night, maybe more.

He shuts the report and leaves it on his desk, leaving his quarters to do his morning rounds.

They’re not on standby but with the state the barracks are still in he knows no one will be holed away. With the supply lines still mostly down, they haven’t been able to do anything about the barracks that got destroyed during the worst of the bombing. They’ve managed to get some supplies in but food and fuel had been the priority, not anything they could use to build or repair.

Sid didn’t think the atmosphere over the base could have got any heavier than it had already been, but he realises now that he was wrong. There is no idle chatter. Groups of men sit together in silence, lost in their guilt, smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Some of them, like Kuni and Horny, seem to need to do something with their hands, some kind of distraction from last night. They’re busy with simple tasks, enough to require concentration but not complex enough that they could fuck it up. Kuni’s shoes are clean enough to see his reflection in from the last hour or so he’s spent cleaning and polishing them, but he carries on, his pair of dress shoes sitting beside his chair ready to be cleaned next. Horny seems to be whittling something from one of the chunks of wood lying around in the debris piles where they’ve tried to clean the base up after all the damage it took. He stares intently at it, enough to block out his surroundings and whatever must be running through his head. He leaves them to it.

He has to look twice to make sure his eyes aren't deceiving him when he sees Joey in the corner of the workshop doing the same thing under Calle’s watchful eye. It looks like he’s organising screws, or maybe laying out the parts that Calle needs for the engine he’s working on beside him. Joey is absolutely the last person Sid expected to see here, today of all days. He expected him to be holed up behind one of the hangars with a bottle of contraband alcohol, not in the thick of things with the rest of them.

When Sid thinks about it, though, Joey actually hasn’t done anything amazingly stupid in the last few days. It’s surprising enough a realisation to cut through his numb haze for a second, and he looks again at Joey and Calle, bent over a box of tools. Joey doesn’t exactly look happy, not by a long stretch, but he looks no worse than he normally does, which is an achievement in itself. His shoulders aren’t as tense or pulled up around his ears like Sid had expected, and he’s lost most of the scowl that Sid honestly doesn’t think he’s seen Joey without since he got here.

He looks younger like this, and it reminds Sid of how young they all are, no matter how old he might feel at times. It’s enough to make him sink back into his stupor, preferring the blankness over the surge of feeling that threatens to drown him if he stops keeping himself occupied for long enough. He moves on to find the rest of his squadron.

They’re not too hard to locate, mostly in their usual spots, and he manages to get through them fairly quickly, except for one.

Roman is missing. Sid walks his usual route again to see if he’d just failed to notice him, because it’s better than trying to sleep and having nothing to keep his mind from spiralling on itself,  but he doesn’t have any luck.

Roman isn’t in the barracks they’ve been sharing with 12 Group, not in the mess hall, there’s no one by their planes or the hangars, and Sid knows he’s not in the workshops. He widens his route to include the stores, even the burnt-out ones, but he comes up empty there too.

He’s running out of places to look that he hasn’t already been to at least twice when he spots Shea leaving the workshop. Shea sees him and raises a hand before patting himself down for his matchbox to relight his cigar. He makes his way over.

“Have you seen Josi?” Sid would humour Shea with the formalities but he honestly doesn’t think he has it in him at the moment. His voice is scratchy, unused. He thinks this is possibly the most he’s said in one go the whole day.

Shea considers him carefully, lighting his cigar and drawing on it a few times before he replies.

“He’s in my barracks.” Shea looks like he wants to continue, but Sid doesn’t really care to hear it. As long as Roman is safe and accounted for, any further elaboration is unnecessary information.

He nods and turns to go over to the mechanics barracks, his sense of duty pushing him into action, but Shea catches his elbow gently.

“I know you like to touch base with everyone, but leave Roman to me, eh, Sid?” There’s an odd look on Shea’s face, one Sid hasn’t seen before and doesn’t know what to make of.

Sid pauses. He nods again, and Shea drops his arm. On any other day, any other time, Sid would have said no. Not out of any sense of superiority, but for his routine and for his peace of mind. But really, if Roman is taking it worse than the rest of them, enough to hide away, then Sid doubts he could have anything to say to him that will actually help.

It’s not that Sid doesn’t care about London, because he does - that loss of life is on them, no matter who issued the orders to fly away from the target, and no matter whether they knew that or not. But it’s just distant in a way that just doesn’t seem to be making an impact on him, just hitting his mind and sliding off again.

“Thank you,” Shea says, and turns towards his quarters, but Sid’s not finished.

“Shea,” he starts, and Shea looks back to him, “I read the report, about Hazelwood. I’m sorry.”

He makes sure to hold Shea’s gaze, to make sure he knows his condolences are sincere. He knows that Shea was good friends with one of the mechanics in the local workshop where they sent planes which couldn’t be fixed on the base, and he knows that the man’s shop in the nearby village of Hazelwood was almost entirely obliterated during the bombing of 11 Group and that he hasn’t been seen since. Shea’s lips pull tight in a weak approximation of a smile, like it hurts just to hear about.

“Thanks, Sid,” he sounds so tired, suddenly. He looks too close to defeated for comfort. Sid lets him go.

Without any immediate purpose he feels adrift, so he walks again just to keep himself in motion, hoping to find something else that requires his attention.

\---

**11th September.**

Just when they think the RAF is about to break, the attacks stop coming. Two days after London there had still been nothing, but they’re kept on standby just in case. The day after that, they’re still on standby, waiting around the runway, but around midday Sullivan emerges from his office and tells them to get some rest. The ground crew keeps the planes primed, but other than that they’re free to wind down.

None of them can fully relax, not after being caught off-guard with London so recently, and not after being on high alert for months. The first day of official reprieve is tense, like they’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, and no-one really gets much rest. Instead, they use the downtime to get more work done around the base, particularly on trying to fully re-establish the supply routes now that they have the time and manpower.

The second day is when they finally get some real rest. Neither pilots nor mechanics are stupid enough not to half expect some form of attack. They’re collectively far too close to finally being broken for them to think otherwise. But, if they’re being given downtime then it makes sense for them to recuperate as much as they possibly can in order to be ready for whatever comes next.

The barrack situation still isn’t ideal, and their temporary fix only worked because of their duty rotation. Men sleep everywhere and anywhere. A lot of them sleep two men to a bunk, too tired to really care about the close quarters. Others sleep anywhere they can find quiet, shade, and a flat surface.

Tanger sleeps in Sid’s quarters now. He cobbles together old burlap sacks and dust sheets to make a bed and drags it in the afternoon they’re taken off rotation. Sid thinks he would normally find Tanger’s presence comforting, just the feeling of someone living nearby that was so readily provided by Flower or Duper when he needed it, but he still isn’t feeling much of anything, really.

Sid sleeps only as much as he needs to, and as soon as he wakes he’s straight out onto the base to find something to do. He buries himself in backlogged paperwork that he didn’t have time to get to between flying and using every other moment he could find to catch up on his reports. The endless monotony of checking numbers and signing off on supply orders, previously repulsive to him when he could be doing something that actually made a difference, now fills his mind in a way that he’s grateful for.

On a night, towards the end of the dinner shift, Tanger comes to find Sid and drags him out for food. Sid’s comfort in routines means that he’s not exactly hard to find. Aside from being on standby and having to fly, it’s not difficult to track him down, he’s at the same places at the same times every day.

Tanger isn’t numb like Sid, and he’s not sad either, but he’s brittle in a way that Sid has never seen in him before. He’s sharper, more rigid somehow, all of his old easy charm and grace eroded away. His flask in a constant companion, and Sid doesn’t blame him a bit.

If they were on standby then Sid would probably have had to take him aside and give him a lecture about flying at less than his best and endangering other pilots, but as it is, he lets Tanger deal with his grief the way he needs to.

He only speaks French now, even when it’s not just him and Sid, when they’re with airmen who doesn't know a word of the language. It’s no longer a way to look after Sid now, but more of a coping mechanism for Tanger himself. The last French-Canadian.

They really are the last, Sid thinks distantly. He, Kuni, and Tanger are the only ones left from before, from training and flight school back in Canada. Horny has been here the longest after them, but it’s not the same - he wasn’t there before Biggin-Hill; they didn’t ship across the Atlantic together.

\--

The numbness that’s consumed him gives Sid a newfound detachment with which he can finally bear thinking about those he’s buried even deeper than Duper and Flower.

He thinks of Armstrong, one of the guys from training who hadn’t been part of the lucky five reassigned to the RAF. Army had been Sid’s crutch at first, while he was still adjusting to military life, his effortless charm a balm to Sid’s nerves. He’d been sent to Italy, shot down somewhere in the north. They hadn’t even been able to find his plane or his body, every trace lost to the mountains.

He thinks of MacKinnon, just a kid from back home who followed him into the Air Force and ended up getting stationed up north with 13 Group. Sid knows they haven’t seen nearly as much action against the enemy as the groups down south have had, but MacKinnon’s name had been there in black and white in the list of losses in one of the mission reports he’d had to read back in June. He couldn’t say he was really close to the kid, but he’d known him and his parents, and he still felt his loss keenly. Only fucking eighteen.

He thinks of Dumoulin and Sheary, so close that in even in their absence Sid can’t separate them in his thoughts. He burns with the lack of knowledge of what happened to them. There isn’t a lot of closure during a war, he knows, but there was even less with the two of them. Sid doesn’t know if they went down in the water, if they were shot down in flames, if they’re even dead at all. For all he knows they could be alive still, rotting in a prisoner of war camp, and he would have no idea.

It’s devastating to watch someone go down and know they don’t have a hope in hell of surviving, but at least you _know_ , and you know that it’s quick for a lot of them. Most of them pass out from the rapid pressure change before they even hit the ground. It’s a mercy, albeit a small, morbid one. Dumoulin and Sheary were good kids, replacements that became his formation that became his friends, even after swearing that he wasn’t going to take an interest in them after seeing so many of replacements die.

He thinks of Johnson, the guy he’d gone through enlistment and basic with, who’d been sent to France right in the middle of the shit while Sid got posted in England out of harm’s way. He’d sent a letter every week, even if it had literally only been a scribbled note to say hello. The last letter Sid had received from Johnson was still in his desk, on the top of the pile of personal correspondence, dated two months before Joey had shown up.

That was, more than anything else, the reason why Sid had initially felt some kind of connection with Joey. Johnson was one of Joey’s squadron, one of the ones that had fallen in the hell of France. That’s what had got him paying attention to Joey, beyond his supposed attitude and his skill in the air, and that’s what had made Sid see the same ache inside Joey that he’d been carrying around too.

He thinks of Taylor, for the first time in a long while. He’d actively trained himself not to think about where she was or what she was doing, the only way he could stomach knowing she’s out there somewhere. He assumes she’s in France, working with the intelligence and resistance networks, but that’s all he knows, and all he wants to know. She could be long dead for all he knows, and even if she isn’t, he doesn’t know when he’ll get to see her again. Who knows how long the war will last.

Taylor is the worst of them all, no matter how much his losses burn if he lingers over them for too long. It’s the hope, and the fear and the uncertainty. He doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead; somehow she’s both at the same time. He has the pain of their indefinite separation, the furthest and longest apart they’ve been for their whole lives, he has the fear of her wellbeing, but he also has the ache of her loss, whether it’s actually warranted or not.

He thanked God when he was sent to England and not to a bomber squad on the continent, so that he didn’t have to constantly worry if Taylor was based wherever he’d just dropped his last payload. The hope is the worst part of it all. There's no hope for the rest of Sid’s buried friends, and he's long accepted the bleakness of the situation, even if it still rubs him raw, but with Taylor there’s always a chance that she’s alive, that she’ll make it out, that he’ll see her again - no matter how slim it may seem.

Sid is shaken from his thoughts by music. Sid’s brow furrows in confusion; he hasn’t heard any music on the base for months. He stops and listens, sure he’s finally snapped and is hearing things, but it’s definitely there. He’s sitting at his desk with the window open next to him, and it sounds like it’s coming from the closest barracks.

He stands up and follows the music, and it doesn’t take long to finally find its source. Paulie and Nealer are sitting on the ground with their backs against the building with a rickety wireless perched on the card table next to them. They’re smoking, sharing the cigarette between them, and watching the clouds go by, talking quietly. They haven’t seen him, judging by the lack of acknowledgement, apparently too lost in their own little bubble. He can just make out what they’re saying over the music if he listens hard enough.

“Ok, so when was the first time you played pond hockey?” Nealer asks, smiling and handing Paulie the cigarette. He waits while Paulie takes a drag and lets out a stream of smoke.

“I was about four, I think. Didn’t go very well. My mom told me that I threw a tantrum in the middle of the ice and she had to come and get me.” He smiles a little at the memory, grinning up at the sky. Nealer laughs delightedly.

“I honestly can’t imagine you throwing a tantrum,” he nudges Paulie’s arm to get his attention to pass him the cigarette again.

“I guess I was just in a bad mood. I don’t think I was great at skating at that age, and there were so many people on the ice that when I fell over, I just wanted to go home. What a brat, ey?” Paulie’s head lolls to the side so he can look at Nealer, still smiling.

“No argument from me. Bet it was cute though,” Nealer’s voice has gone soft.

It’s enough to make Sid blink in surprise, and he decides he needs to get back to his paperwork. It looks like they’ve found a moment of peace, and Sid is loath to interrupt.

Sid spends the rest of the afternoon typing up meaningless reports to add to the pile of bumph on the end of his desk. There haven’t been any missions to write about, but command still requests daily updates. He makes to close the window when he gets back to his quarters so he can concentrate, but when he grips the handle to pull it shut he thinks twice of it, instead letting the faint strains of music keep him company for the rest of the day.

Eventually he collects his reports to take them over to HQ. As he walks past the alley between barracks where the radio was, he takes in the crowd that has gathered around it. There are at least fifteen of them, all squeezed into the alley or spilling out of its mouth, just sitting and listening, or talking to whoever was next to them. He can’t see Paulie or Nealer among the group, but it’s nearing time for dinner so he assumes they must have relocated to the mess hall.

It seems like a good thing, to him, that the men are relaxing and staying close, rather than tensions resulting in fights breaking out in the ranks, and Sid is sure the wireless has been a factor in that good will. He makes a note to commend Paulie on his ingenuity.

\---

**15th September.**

This time, they’re ready. For the first time, they have the advantage.

When the call to action comes in from fighter command, the RAF has enough time to mobilise far more planes than they’re usually able to manage. Biggin-Hill can only send one squadron, their other runways still not in good enough shape to be used despite the repair work, but the response from 12 Group and 10 Group is huge.

They know the Germans are gunning for London to capitalise on the damage they did last time, but this time they have the chance to head them off and hopefully take out the majority of their bombers before they can reach their target.

The 87th is scrambled, and they take to the air as the first contact. Their job is to draw out the fighter escort, to make the German bombers vulnerable.

It’s one of the smoothest fights Sid can remember, outside of training. Being confronted just as they hit the Channel catches the enemy off-guard, and the Allied ploy to strip off the defence works perfectly.

After that Sid only has room in his thoughts for keeping the Messerschmitts from getting too close or cutting him off from the rest of his formation. They all target a Messerschmitt, draw it out of the formation and loop around to shoot it down. When they lose their tails, they go back for another, and they repeat the process as the huge convoy thunders over southern England.

After a while, explosions tear through the air - it can only be the bombers starting to drop their payloads. Sid knows that they’re still at least twenty minutes out from London at top speed, so he assumes that must mean the RAF have the upper hand here. When the fighter escort thins out a little more, his squadron switches it up and goes on the offensive, running down the Junkers that have dropped their loads prematurely in order to make an escape.

It’s like a turkey shoot, and Sid’s breath catches in his chest when he thinks about how many enemy planes they must have taken down. They’re on top of this, and for the first time in months his boys are coming out far better than the Luftwaffe.

When they land the air is so much lighter on the base. They’re still tired, still on edge, but there’s not much that could dampen the feeling of a triumph well-earned and long in the making.

Sid is positively affected enough to smile back at Kuni when they cross paths walking away from the landing strip. It’s not a big smile, but it’s more than he’s been able to manage for a while now.

His eyes drift past Kuni to where Joey has just climbed out of his own plane. Sid sees Calle rushing to him and attempting to throw an arm around his shoulder, though he’s not quite tall enough for it to work. Sid braces himself for another outburst like the one at Forsberg, but he’s surprised. Instead of shouting, Joey actually smiles and puts his own arm around Calle. He looks away then, somehow feeling like he’s intruding on something.

As good as he feels after such a resounding victory, it still isn’t enough to completely chase away the feeling of detachment that’s clouded his mind since Flower’s death. He takes himself away to his quarters, not feeling like being caught in the thick of the excitement.

He doesn’t linger on how he feels, or rather, that he doesn’t feel. He sits at his desk, and casts an eye over the neatly-arranged desktop.

He picks up a sheet of paper and feeds it into the typewriter before setting the roller, precise and careful. He begins to type, and doesn’t pause even when Tanger stumbles into the room and makes straight for his makeshift pallet. He writes well into the night, not stopping until his report is finished.

\---

**17th September.**

It's the first thing that really cuts through the haze Sid has been living in for the last week. He gets called in to see Sullivan and Laviolette in the middle of the day, and when he walks in they're smiling - well, not exactly, but they’re not _frowning_ \- and it's enough of a difference to put Sid on edge. He stands and waits for them to address him, wary.

“Good news,” Sullivan says at last. He brandishes a file triumphantly. Sid looks at him quizzically, and takes the folder when it’s handed to him. He flips it open and begins to read.

He stops, suddenly, eyes sticking on the bold type.

_Operation Sealion: postponed indefinitely as of 17th September 1940._

He looks up at Sullivan, who nods proudly.

“Just come in, fresh from Bletchley. We did it.”

Sid doesn’t really know how to respond, and he says as much.

“I know, we couldn’t believe it either. Didn’t seem like it would ever happen, did it?” Laviolette chimes in finally.

“You’d better get started on informing the men, I’m sure they’d like to know the news, Crosby,” Sullivan gestures to the papers in Sid’s hands, a larger smile finally starting to grow on his face.

Sid nods and hands him back the file before he salutes and is waved out by Laviolette.

He feels blank, but it’s a totally different kind of blankness to the stupor that’s been hanging over him. This is less disassociation and more pure shock at having something he’d never really allowed himself to imagine finally happen. It’s not aversion to the reality of the situation but simply the need to process it.

Tanger finds him first. He still looks rumpled most of the time, and he’s still sleeping on the floor of Sid’s quarters even now that they’re back on rotation. Despite that, Sid has noticed that he’s been relying a bit less on his hipflask -  a good sign.

“ _Meeting?_ ” He asks, and Sid nods. He waits for Sid to continue, but at the lack of elaboration he speaks again, “ _and how did it go?_ ”

“It’s over. The invasion, it’s been postponed.” Sid can’t concentrate enough to reply in French. It comes out sounding almost like a question rather than a fact he’s just read in black and white.

“ _What? You’re serious, we’re done?_ ” Tanger has a light in his eyes that Sid hasn’t seen for a long time. They’re not entirely finished here, the Luftwaffe are still more that strong enough to take them out, even with the massive losses they’ve just suffered over the south-east of England at the hands of the RAF, but the immediate threat of invasion is over, and 11 Group can breathe a little easier for it.

“Yeah,” is all he says, figuring that he doesn’t need to qualify it to Tanger at least.

Tanger grins, claps his hands around both of Sid’s biceps and shakes him a little in celebration.

“ _Well, let’s go and spread the word!_ ” He drags Sid along without waiting for him to move at all, and Sid lets him. A tiny smile plays around the corner of his mouth, the beginnings of happiness almost an alien feeling to him now. It feels good.

\---

It’ll be more efficient if to get everyone gathered in the mess hall to tell them the news all at once, rather than going person to person. Sid and Tanger round up the other Wing Commanders and Squadron Leaders to inform them of their victory and to get them to gather their men and meet at the mess hall in half an hour. He, Tanger, Horny, and Kuni all split to rouse those still in the barracks, to find wanderers, and to round up the ground crews.

By the time the entire group is gathered in the mess, there’s a buzz in the air. No one knows what’s going on and experience has taught them to expect the worst, but it’s clear from the faces of their superiors that the news isn’t something to dread.

None of the officers had even asked to be the one to deliver the news instead of him, so Sid moves to the front of the hall by the serving hatch and clears his throat. The hum of dozens of separate conversations dies immediately and Sid is left in silence, everyone turned to him expectantly.

“I know you’re all wondering why we’ve called you here. Before I get to that, though, I just want to commend you all on your strength, your perseverance, and your ability. Some of you have only been here for a short while, and some of you have been here since the beginning, but every one of you has done your job and done it well,” he pauses and looks around the room at everyone gathered in front of him. He sees Joey watching him with a small frown, so he makes sure to catch his eye and hold it for a long moment before his gaze moves on. He’s had his issues with Joey, and they were serious issues, but that doesn’t exclude him from this praise. Joey is a good pilot who let his head get in the way for a while, but, with a lot of pushing, he has begun to move past it. Sid continues.

“As of yesterday, the immediate threat of invasion from Germany is over,” he is forced to pause again by the cheers that erupt from the men, filling the hall and spilling out. He raises his voice to speak over them, and they quiet again. “We have to stay vigilant. The war isn’t over yet, and the Luftwaffe aren’t destroyed. They’re still going to throw everything they have at us, but we’ve shown that all of us, as a unit, as a force, have what it takes to resist them. You’ve all been a credit to your units, men. You should be proud.”

The second Sid stops talking, noise erupts from every corner of the room. Men turn to each other with smiles and clap each other on backs and shoulders, or throw themselves at each other, their enthusiasm unrestrained.

A smile spreads over Sid’s face, slow as molasses, at the sight of their elation. It warms something in him to see it, and he allows himself to be pulled into hugs by the other officers, clapping shoulders and backs himself.

\---

Sid is back in his quarters after he’d stayed with the men in the mess for a few hours when there’s a knock at his door, and he beckons whoever it is in.

It’s Joey.

Sid motions to the seat to the side of the desk and waits until Joey pulls it up and sits down. He looks like he’s preparing to speak, so Sid allows him the time to think.

“I’m sorry,” is what he eventually comes out with.

Sid doesn’t hide his surprise. “For what?” he asks.

Joey pauses again, looking like it’s hard to say whatever he’s about to even when he’s mostly worked through the angry front he’s been hiding behind for most of his tenure at Biggin-Hill.

“I haven’t exactly been… the most reliable guy, since I got here.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue with that,” Sid says lightly, without any malice.

He watches Joey looks down for a second before he speaks again.

“You stuck by me, though.” It’s not a question.

“I won’t lie to you, Johansen, I did try to have you grounded at your worst, when you were a danger to my other pilots. But yes, I knew there was something in you worth bringing out,” Sid isn’t here to protect Joey’s feelings, as much as he likes him. It’ll do the man good to know the truth.

Joey takes that in and has to process it for a second, and once again Sid allows him the time to do so. He obviously didn’t know about Sid’s efforts to have him grounded, but he can’t really argue with the reasons behind it and they both know it.

“How, though?” Joey asks, and when Sid’s brows furrow in question, he continues, “you didn’t know me from Adam when I was posted here, so how did you know?”

“I did know, though,” Sid considers him for a second before he pulls his drawer open and reaches inside. He pulls out a stack of letters and sets them in front of him. “These are from a good friend of mine, Flight Lieutenant Jack Johnson.” He sees the second Joey recognises the name and realises what he’s saying.

“I read the reports from France, so I know what you’re capable of in the air, but Jack’s letters told me what you were capable of on the ground.”

Joey is staring at the pile of letters, looking a little haunted. Sid knows the feeling. He keeps talking.

“I know that you know you’re not the only one who’s seen his friends die, but it’s hard to remember that when it’s happening to you. I know. I saw that, and I knew the feeling. That’s how I knew you were worth trying to get through to.”

“Thank you. For not giving up.” Joey’s voice is small, and when he looks at Sid, he hears the rest of what he’s trying to say. Thank you for not letting me get myself get killed.

Sid merely nods in return, and knows Joey understands.

“Thank you, Sir,” he says again, and stands up.

Sid smiles softly. “You’re welcome.”

He nudges closer to the door, looking a little lighter but still not quite there yet. Sid will take any improvement though, and he knows Joey still has a long way to go yet.

“Dismissed, Johansen. Go back to whatever party they’ve cobbled together. Find Jarnkrok.”

Joey gives him a considering look over his shoulder, but when Sid says nothing more he leaves and shuts the door behind him. Sid goes back to his paperwork, feeling better for it. He can’t seem to concentrate, unable to quiet the sense of pride and achievement in his chest enough to focus on typing.

He is proud, _so_ proud of what they have done here. His men were pushed to the very brink of collapse, and through luck and perseverance managed to hold on, and now here they are, celebrating a successful resistance against the supposedly unstoppable German military. On the back of everything, of the chaos of Dunkirk, of Europe falling nation by nation under the wheels of the Panzers, this victory, at least, gives the Allied forces hope.

He knows they need to stay strong, to stay ready for whatever comes next, and he knows it’s not going to be easy and that they’re going to continue to lose good men, but now they’re finally on top.

**Author's Note:**

> List of explicitly mentioned character deaths:  
> Before the fic takes place:  
> Pascal Dupuis,  
> Boone Jenner,  
> Beau Bennett,  
> Nick Spaling,  
> During the fic:  
> Marc-Andre Fleury.


End file.
